Europe, the US, East Asia and Latin America, all across the world, fewer and fewer gen-Z men and women are forming relationships.

This is a really big deal for the global economy because —given that you need two people to make a baby— Gen-Z’s love crisis is causing birth rates to plummet even faster than they already were due to couples having fewer children.

So what’s behind this global trend? Why can’t Gen-Z find love anymore?

That is one of the big questions sociologists, psychologists, and economists have been writing dozens of research papers about. But, don’t worry, we went through all of them, and have selected the 3 main trends that can explain why gen-Z can’t find love anymore. However, before diving into these, we need to step back and see where this trend started a couple of generations ago by diving into

A brief history of marriage and staying single

These were my grandparents. For them marriage was about far more than love. For them, it signified adulthood, respectability AND, importantly, it just made economic sense. You see, in those days running a household was hard work. So, if men wanted to work fulltime, they needed to find a wife. Meanwhile, few women had access to paid work, so if they wanted financial stability, they needed to find a husband. Remaining single carried stigma, especially for women, who were often referred to in derogatory terms like spinster or old maid. The stigma was even worse for unmarried pregnant women. Add to this that contraception was limited, and you’ll see that on top of the economic reasons, marriage was also the only safe way to have an active sex life.

A rapidly improving economy changed this dynamic two ways. First, inventions like the dishwasher, vacuum cleaner and especially the washing machine made housework far less demanding. Second, increased household wealth and government services gave middle class families increased access to services previously only available to the ultra wealthy like a cleaning help, babysitter and day care. On top of that, the invention of contraception and the liberalization of abortion meant that marriage was now no longer the only safe way to have an active sex life.

Therefore, marriage or even coupling without marriage became a choice, rather than a necessity. This could explain why soon after marriage rates started falling relentlessly in the US. But, importantly, a lot of that was initially compensated by the fact that more and more people became couples without marrying.

Even without the economic necessity and strong social norms, people still wanted a stable relationship. This makes sense given that men and women that enjoyed a long stable relation tend to be happier and healthier.

And yet, despite that, a new trend soon emerged, all across the world young people are now not JUST getting married less, they are now struggling to find love.

Such a recent trend is hard to justify by pointing at washing machines and condoms.

So, if we want to answer our question why Gen-Z can’t find love anymore, we need to turn to three more recent explanations.

1 An increasing male and female labor market mismatch

To understand this mismatch, we need to talk about what economists call assortative mating. Assortative mating means that both men and women tend to prefer a partner with roughly the same educational and socioeconomic background. Therefore, researchers often split the marriage market into one for college educated and one for non-college educated workers.

Today, there are two trends that are upending the love life of both college and non-college educated young men and women. When it comes to college , this graph shows us that while there used to be more college educated men in 1970, this trend has now flipped. In countries ranging from the UK, to Korea to Spain, there are now far more college educated women than men. According to the theory of assortative mating, fewer college educated men compared to women will lead to fewer couples.

However, if we look at marriage rates for college educated women in the US, we can see that, SURPRISINGLY, it’s rather stable. It’s actually non-college educated women that increasingly remain single.

But, why?

According to a recent study by economist Clara Chambers, Benjamin Goldman and Joseph Winkelmann, the most likely explanation is that college educated women are increasingly willing to “marry down.” Where marrying “down” purely refers to marrying down the educational ladder.

When diving deeper, we see that what actually happens is that college educated women are actually marrying the most successful non-college educated men. That is, those that have increased their earnings over time.

So, economically speaking, they are not really marrying “down”

Meanwhile, the non-college educated men that are not snatched up by college educated women are earning less and less.

This brings us to our second trend that can explain why Gen-Z men and women without a college education cannot find love anymore. This trend is that while women have increasingly joined the labor force, men have increasingly dropped out of the labor force altogether.

But, as you can see here, it’s not just any men, it’s mostly men that have no college education, especially those that haven’t finished high school that have increasingly dropped out of the labor market altogether.

Why is that the case? Economics professors Ngai and Petrongolo, have theorized that the reason is that our economies switched from manufacturing based to service based economies. The increased appearance of service and care jobs has benefitted women without a college degree while the disappearance of manufacturing jobs has negatively affected men.

How can this explain why non-college educated women can’t find a partner anymore? For that we have to go back to our theory of assortative mating.

As increasing numbers of non-college men withdraw from the labor market altogether, they essentially form a new group. A group that is not attractive to non-college educated women who are less willing to marry down as they seek at least some economic stability in a long-term partnership.

This theory could fully explain that it’s actually non-college educated men and women that are driving the downward trend in marriages, at least in the US.

While we do not have such detailed data for all countries, new research from Finland also shows that in 2024 far more women and men with a basic education are NOT in a relationship. The more highly educated men and women are, the more likely they are to be in a stable relationship.

The core takeaway is clear: when boys struggle in school, have trouble finding work, and fail to transition to a care focused economy, then it means that both less educated men and women are more likely to stay single.

This could explain why, on average, gen-Z can’t find love anymore…. But, the recent Chinese experience shows us that it’s probably not the whole story. You see, while it became more and more difficult to find low skilled manufacturing jobs in the US and elsewhere, this sector thrived in China.

Yes, while marriage rates went up along with manufacturing employment at first, they have recently also started dropping for China’s Gen-Z, hitting their lowest point in 2024. This brings us to our second explanation, which is

2 Housing affordability

Our first clue to its importance is that a 2011 survey found that roughly 70% of Chinese women consider homeownership necessary before marrying. In that light, it’s not surprising that a team of University of Singapore economists has recently estimate that a 1% increase in Chinese house prices led to an average fall in marriage rates of 0.31%.

This could explain why, while manufacturing jobs continued to increase, marriage rates already started falling rapidly in 2013, when China’s house prices surged to never before seen levels.

Similar studies have also found a negative effect of increased house prices on marriage rates in Spain and Korea. However, these effects were typically quite small. On top of that, couple formation is also declining in rural China and rural parts of the United States, where housing remains relatively affordable.

So, while Gen-Z is definitely suffering from expensive houses, housing alone is probably just a small piece of the puzzle, which brings us to the third explanation:

3 The rise of smartphones, social & addictive digital media.

Gen-Z is the first generation to go through high-school and university with a smartphone in their pockets and new forms of social media. Increased use of digital media is leading to less love for Gen-Z in two main ways.

The first worrying trend is that research by FT journalist John Burn-Murdoch has revealed that Gen-Z is spending many more hours alone at a young age than the generation that came before it. As people get older, they spent more hours alone. This pattern remains. However, strikingly, Gen-Z, which is the red line, now spends way more hours alone.. at a young age. This pattern holds in the US, UK, and Europe.

The second worrying trend that comes from John Burn-Murdoch’s research is that Gen-Z’s personality seems to be changing much more rapidly than that of older generations. This pattern holds for 4 of the 5 main personality traits that psychologists like to use: conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, and extroversion.

First, this red line shows that, since 2016, Gen-Z is quickly becoming less conscientious than generations that came before it. Contentiousness is a psychological trait related to self-discipline, reliability and follow-through. Lower conscientiousness makes it harder to signal stability and commitment, a drawback in both work and relationships.

Second, neuroticism reflects emotional stability and how strongly we react to stress and negative emotions. Gen-Z is more neurotic than previous generations, and, since 2017, increasingly so. Higher neuroticism means greater anxiety, mood swings and sensitivity to rejection, not exactly helpful when dating already feels risky.

Third, agreeableness measures empathy, cooperativeness and the willingness to compromise. Lower agreeableness can make people seem more combative, critical or self-focused, which, when taken too far, undermines trust and warmth in new relationships. Again, Gen-Z is less agreeable and it’s gotten significantly worse since 2016.

Finally, extraversion covers sociability, assertiveness and energy in social settings. Less extraversion translates in less initiative in approaching others, which can be detrimental for meeting new partners. As we can see here, Gen-Z started out roughly as extroverted as other generations, but this has rapidly gone down since the pandemic.

Could it be that the rise of social media, smartphones and increasingly addictive digital media are simply causing Gen-Z men and women to spend more time alone. Then, as they spend more time alone, glued to screens, they (1) simply don’t meet suitable partners, and (2) unlearn crucial social skills needed to form lasting relationships?

We do have good evidence that couples are meeting less and less in person. And, while it is true that a growing share of couples were meeting online. Young people are now increasingly abandoning these dating apps in frustration.

Another interesting piece of evidence to support the theory that social media is playing a role is that we are seeing that in places where women’s internet use remains very low, such as much of South Asia, marriage rates have stayed high and relatively stable.

Still, despite this evidence, the scientific debate about the impact of social media on mental health remains far from settled. Correlation does not equal causation, and it is hard to measure these effects in the laboratory. Although rising rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and personality changes in the United States coincide with the spread of smartphones and COVID lockdowns, much more evidence is needed to clarify the mechanisms at play, the true magnitude of these effects, and the extent to which these patterns are global rather than country-specific.

Therefore, in

Conclusion

I have to be honest here. Social sciences like economics, psychology, and sociology do NOT give us a definitive answer about why Gen-Z can’t find love anymore.

Still, we have seen that there are some striking patterns. First, after remaining single was no longer a social taboo and economic nightmare, we can see that marriage rates started to drop. At first, this was compensated for by co-habilitation. But, then as men started falling behind in the education system, house prices got higher and higher, and smartphones and addictive social media hit the scene, it got worse for Gen-Z then it ever was the for the generations before them.

Each of these explanations have likely contributed. But, personally, I think there is the most evidence for the theory that less educated men and women are driving this trend thanks to more women being educated, and more men dropping out of the labor market altogether.

The trend that Gen-Z can’t find love anymore should worry governments all around the world, as less couples means less babies, which will contribute to the demographic crisis we are already seeing. Luckily our research suggests that there are at least 3 solutions. First, governments should make sure less boys drop out of the education system. Second, they should make sure houses remain affordable. Third, as schools and parents in more and more increasingly do, it may make sense to experiment with limiting smart phone and social media use across schools, while encouraging face to face interactions for both young and old.

But, yeah, that is my take, which of these mechanisms do you think are the most important? What do you think government should do about it? Let me know in the comments below, and … remember, if you are travelling abroad soon, download Saily and use our discount cost to keep your phone charges low… this also helps out the channel as increases the chance sponsors will keep sponsor our videos.